VE Day, A Time to Reflect

The Second World War in Europe ended 73 years ago today. It was a titanic struggle in which the Red Army bore the brunt of fighting, and inflicted close to four-fifths of all military casualties suffered by the Greater German Reich. It was also the most destructive conflict in human history, which took over 50 million lives by conservative estimates.

It is nevertheless arguable that the Second World War was not the most catastrophic event in European history, in terms its moral and spiritual consequences. In metahistorical terms, that dark distinction belongs to the First World War; the centennial of the Great War’s ending will be marked on November 11 this year. The war of 1939-1945 was the second round of Europe’s extended suicide which started in July 1914. …

Fundamentally, the catastrophe of 1914-1945 was due to the growing schism between Europe’s heart and mind. It started in the Renaissance, matured during the Enlightenment, tasted blood with the guillotine, and produced — well before the Guns of August roared over France, Russia, Serbia and Belgium — the modern times’ four horsemen of the Apocalypse: Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Picasso. The trail of destruction wreaked by this monstrous quartet in the 19th and early 20th centuries was made possible by the Europeans’ growing belief that human reason, reinforced by science and technology, contains the clue to all key dilemmas and challenges of human existence; and, at the same time, that human yearnings and passions should not be and must not be fettered by the shackles of natural law or morality.

This is where Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Tito, Mao . . . came from on the smoldering ruins of the Great War. This is where the Clintons, Soros, the collective Beast of Brussels known as the European Union, and the rest of the Western postmodern elite class come from today. They all belong (“objectively,” as Marx would say) to the same camp. They hate societies still based on national and cultural commonalities. They view all tradition (unless relegated to harmless “heritage”) and all organically developed institutions with blind animosity.

They have won, for now.

As the Italian coast guard brings further thousands of “migrants” to European safety every day, and fresh millions are getting ready to make the crossing, it seems clear that … the victory over Nazism in 1945 signified less than is comfortable to imagine. Hitler’s defeat marked the beginning of the Long March for the bolshevik-fascist neoliberal synthesis. A little over seven decades later, the dominant elites of the “liberal” West — by now completely devoid of any sense of purpose and history — is unable to protect itself from those who want to destroy and conquer it. Multiculturalism has ensured that Western nations have lost the capacity to define and defend themselves vis-à-vis others, just as most immigrants demonstrably have no sense of kinship with their host societies.